Exclusive: AI startup Attention just raised $14 million to bring its natural language processing tech to sales calls

• AI startup Attention raised a $14 cardinal Series A backing information from Alven, Eniac, and Frst.
• The startup uses AI and earthy connection processing to glean information and adjacent steps from income calls.
• Other startups are bringing AI into nan endeavor package scenery to make income much efficient.

New York-based AI startup Attention, which uses earthy connection processing to capable retired customer narration guidance (CRM) programs and make action items from income calls, conscionable raised a caller information of funding.

The startup told Business Insider that it had secured a $14 cardinal Series A backing information led by French VC patient Alven. Existing investors Eniac, Frst, and Liquid2 Ventures besides participated successful nan backing round, on pinch 645 Ventures and Aglae.

The costs travel a $3.1 cardinal seed information nan startup raised erstwhile it launched successful January 2023.

When Attention founders Anis Bennaceur and Matthias Wickenburg first met, they were building competing startups. At nan time, Bennaceur was building Mixer, a profession level for imaginative professionals, and Wickenburg was moving connected competitor Swipecast. But they bonded complete a shared symptom point: income calls.

Sales calls were a nuisance because "it was difficult to cognize what was happening," Bennaceur told BI, adding that "there was thing to grounds calls aliases transcribe nan conversation, truthful it was difficult to get measurement retired of these conversations."

So they forged an confederation and, successful 2021, launched Attention to thief lick nan issue.

The duo spent 8 months moving connected nan first loop of Attention, which utilized AI to coach income reps. When that type struggled to find product-market fit, they pivoted successful mid-2022 to create a programme that utilized AI to transcribe income calls and automatically capable retired nan CRM.

While Swipecast was bootstrapped during its six-year run, Bennaceur and Wickenburg knew that they wanted to spell nan VC way pinch Attention to lucifer deeper title successful nan endeavor tech abstraction and prosecute capable engineering talent to build an AI program.

Attention's AI analyzes income squad calls and generates action items specified arsenic follow-up emails and Salesforce updates. The tech tin besides place customers who are a churn consequence and supply scorecards.

With its caller information of funding, Attention will attraction connected automating much business tasks pinch nan broader imagination of "putting nan income squad connected autopilot," Bennaceur said.

In summation to filling retired a CRM, he envisions a world wherever his tech prepares handover notes, mitigates churn risks, handles email correspondence and customer tickets, and analyzes nan information provided by customer interactions done nan income process.

"We spent a batch of clip building an engine," he said. "We want companies to person arsenic thin of a squad arsenic imaginable that generates 100x of nan outputs that you utilized to beryllium capable to do before."

Attention is conscionable 1 of galore companies successful nan increasing business of utilizing generative AI to amended income and supercharge nan endeavor package space.

Late-stage startup Gong, which besides records income calls, raised $250 cardinal successful Series E backing successful 2021 astatine a $7.25 cardinal valuation. And 11x.ai, which is building AI income reps, raised a $50 cardinal Series B past period from a16z, TechCrunch reported.